On this twentieth anniversary of the Langston University Small Farm Conference, rather than look
back, I would like to look forward, to the year 2050. First, we can
certainly expect farming be quite different by then because we live in an
ever-changing world. In fact, change is said to be “the only constant in life.”
There always enough new ideas and new technologies coming along to keep life
interesting. So, change is a normal and usual aspect of life. However, some
changes are not normal or usual. Some changes are revolutionary – truly life
changing. In fact, every two hundred years of so throughout human history,
society has gone through great transformations that have changed our understanding
of how the world works and our place within it. Such changes eventually change
virtually every aspect of life. I believe we are currently living such a time. People
who are born in the year 2050 will not be able to imagine the world of today.

Over the
years, I have come to the conclusion that people don't make big changes unless three conditions
exist. First, we have to become convinced that what we are doing now isn't
working and isn't going to work in the future. We have to have a good reason to
change. But, that's not enough. We also must have a clear concept or vision of
what we could do instead that would be fundamentally better than what we are
doing today. Without a clear vision of something better to change to, most
people just keep on doing what they have been doing. Finally, we must believe
that the something better is possible, even if not quick and easy. Most people
do not pursue impossible dreams. We must have hope. Change is risky and
uncomfortable and sometimes difficult and painful. Lacking any one of the three
preconditions for change, most people just keep on doing what they are doing.

I believe the changes of the next
fifty-years will be at least as big as those of the Industrial Revolution of
the late 1700s, and perhaps as important as the beginning of science in the
early 1600s.However, today's
great transformation is not being driven by the quest for knowledge or wealth
but instead by the questions of sustainability; questions of whether we can
keep doing what we are doing? Sustainability asks: how can we meet the needs of
the present without diminishing opportunities for those of the future? When we
ask the questions of sustainability earnestly and honestly; we come to
inevitable conclusion: what we are doing now isn't even meeting the needs of
most people today, and most certainly isn't capable of meeting the needs of future
generations. Our current way of life is not sustainable.

The changes ahead will be even more dramatic
and revolutionary because we failed to make the changes when we first recognized
the challenges. Forty years ago, Americans had begun to ask the questions
of sustainability and were beginning to confront the ecological and social challenges
of sustainability. The environmental, civil rights, and peace movements of the
1960s represented an awakening to environmental degradation and social
injustices that were eroding the foundation of our economy and threatening our
democracy. These movements resulted in an aggressive public policy agenda for
the 1970s. Environmental and civil rights legislation placed restrictions on
environmental pollution and extended democracy for African Americans. However,
such changes never come without costs.Unfortunately, America retreated from ecological and social reality during
the 1980s, and returned to the pursuit of narrow individual economic
self-interests. The environmental, social, and economic challenges facing
America today is largely a consequence of the past 30-years of denial and
retreat from reality.

Even today, many people are still not
convinced that what we are doing isn't working, or that making it work will
require anything more than usual, ordinary changes. For example, many people
still believe we have plenty of fossil energy; we just need to drill deeper in
more places and remove environmental restrictions. Many also doubt that global
climate change is real, or if it is, that we humans are making it worse. Others
don't believe that growing economic and social inequity is a problem. They
don't want to tax the rich because they believe the rich provide jobs and that poor
people are poor because they are lazy. Many Americans don't believe we need to
fix our economy or society; we just need to get rid of environmentalists and
poor people. The economy is still working for them and they aren't going to
change it without a fight.

Such thinking is nothing more than
the rationalizations of people who are simply unwilling to confront the consequences
of their greed for the future of humanity. We simply can't continue doing what
we are doing. It's not sustainable. This is not a personal opinion; it is based
on some of the most fundamental laws of science. Sustainability ultimately is a
matter of energy. Our houses, clothes, cars, our food, require energy to make
and energy to use. All material things are simply concentrated forms of
energy.Human imagination, creativity,
and labor also require energy – the brain uses something like 20% of the energy
used by the human body. In addition, we are not born as productive individuals;
we are born as helpless babies. We must be nurtured, cared for, socialized,
civilized, and educated by society before we become useful to society. All of this
requires human energy. According to the laws of thermodynamics, energy can
neither be created nor destroyed. However, each time we use energy to do
anything useful, some of its usefulness is lost – the law of entropy. We are
using up the usefulness of the earth's energy.

The economic growth of the
industrial era was made possible by an abundance of cheap energy – first the
old growth forests, then surface mining of coal, and for the past 100-years, by
shallow reservoirs of oil and natural gas. There was plenty of energy to
support two centuries of economic growth. However, the old growth forests are gone.
We are blowing up bedrock and mountain tops to get the remaining coal and
natural gas. We are drilling for oil deep beneath the oceans and in the remote
corners of the world.We are not out of
fossil energy, at least not yet, but we are quickly running out of cheap
energy. The remaining sources of fossil energy, mostly coal, are major
contributors to greenhouse gasses and other pollutants which are threatening
the ability of the earth's natural ecosystems to support human life. The
industrial era is over. By the year 2050 very little recoverable or useful
fossil energy will be left.

The only sustainable source of
energy is solar energy. However, energy from all the sustainable sources
combined – wind, water, solar panels, biofuels – will the less plentiful and
far more costly than fossil energy. The days of cheap, abundant energy are
over. The industrial era was an aberration in human history that is not likely
to be repeated. We can't continue doing what we are doing. It is not
sustainable. Change is no longer an option; it is a necessity.

We can see the necessity for
change perhaps most clearly in the diminishing employment opportunities for
middleclass American workers. The good paying manufacturing jobs, with paid
retirement and health insurance, are either being moving to lower-wage
countries or being replaced with lower-paying jobs or part time jobs with few
if any benefits. Most former factory workers lack the aptitude and training for
the high-tech jobs that were promised as replacements. In addition, many of the
new high-tech jobs also are going to lower-wage countries, particularly India
and China. The gap between the wealthy and the rest of Americans is wider than
at any time since the “gilded age” prior to the Great Depression, and is growing
wider each year.

We can see parallel trends in agriculture
in the demise of the mid-sized, full-time family farms. Farm employment is
being lost to the industrialization of agriculture, which inevitably replaces
people (labor and management) with mechanization and chemistry (capital and
technology). In addition, many displaced farmers are no longer able to find
off-farm employment adequate to support their families in the faltering
non-farm economy. We also see a growing concentration of wealth in agriculture
among the largest farm operators, non-residential landlords, and corporate agribusiness
investors. The proliferation of large-scale contract feeding operations –
poultry, hogs, dairy, and beef – is siphoning the remaining income and wealth
out of rural communities and into the coffers of wealthy corporate investors. Corporate
consolidation of control means fewer farmers and concentration of economic and
political power. Concentration of economic and political power leads to market
manipulation and generous government subsidies for industrial agriculture,
which inflate the market values of farmland and create economic barriers for
new farmers.

Farmers are also caught up on the
perils of rising energy costs with an agriculture that is hopelessly dependent
of fossil energy. The impressive productivity of American agriculture is a
direct consequence of cheap fossil energy – for fuels, fertilizers, and
transportation. The American food system claims about 20% of all fossil energy used
and requires about 10 calories of fossil energy for each calorie of food energy
produced. About one-third of this total is accounted for at the farm level. The
food system contributes a similar share of environmental problems, as
greenhouse gasses are inevitably released through the use of fossil energy.
Farming poses an added threat to global climate change through the release of
methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from livestock operations and carbon
dioxide from tillage of the soil.

A new challenge looming on the horizon
is the growing public awareness of the rising costs of health care, which have
paralleled the industrialization of agriculture. Diet related illnesses are
rampant in America, including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart failure,
and various types of cancers. Obesity
related illnesses alone are projected to claim about one-in-five dollars spent
for health care in America by 2020 – erasing virtually all of the gains made in
improving public health over the past several decades.[1]There is a growing body of
scientific evidence linking industrial agriculture to foods that are rich in
calories and poor in nutrients, thus helping to fuel the epidemic of obesity
and other diet-related illnesses.[2]

The industrialization of
agriculture, and the government policies that supported it, have been an
absolute failure. Our current systems of farming and food production are not
sustainable. A larger percentage of Americans are “food insecure” today than during
the 1960s. Those who can afford to buy enough food are far less healthy. We are
not meeting the needs of the present and certainly not leaving equal or better
opportunities for the future. An industrial agriculture is not sustainable.
Fundamental change in agriculture is not an option; it is a necessity.

That said, we will not change from our current way of life until we
have a clear concept of a better of life that we can change to. We must first
create a new vision of a better future. That new vision must begin with the
realization that we don't need more economic growth; that we already have
enough “stuff.” Ironically, the father
of Keynesian economic theory, John Maynard Keynes, anticipated the current time
of change back in the 1920s.He thought the economic problem
would be solved within a hundred years, which would be about now. He didn't
consider the economic problem to be the permanent problem of humanity, but only a temporary problem to be
overcome.”[3] He
thought the permanent problem was to learn the “true art of living,” to use our
freedom from economic deprivation to “live wisely and agreeably and well.”

As it turned out, Keynes was
actually too conservative. The “economic problem” in America was solved as
early as the 1960s. There has been no increase in overall well-being or
happiness in the U.S. or the rest of the so called developed world since the
1950s, in spite of continued growth in wealth and the consumption of
“stuff.”The challenge for Americans
today is not to try to restore unsustainable economic growth, but instead to
learn to live “wisely, agreeably, and well.” We already have enough “stuff.” Admittedly, many so-called “lesser-developed”
countries of the world still need to work on the temporary problem of economic
growth. However, there are more than enough resources on earth to meet the
basic needs of people in both developed and developing countries of the world,
just not enough to sustain the economic growth we have come to expect. It's
time to turn our attention to the art of living wisely, agreeably, and well.

It's time to return to the historic purpose
of life; to the pursuit of happiness. People through human history have known
that beyond some fairly modest level of material well-being there is no
relationship between further increases in income or wealth and increases in happiness
or overall quality of life.[4]
Once our basic material needs are met – food, clothing, shelter, health care, –
the quality of our life depends far more on the quality of our relationships –
friends, family, community, society – than on the quantity of income or wealth.
We are social beings; we need to love and be loved. We are also moral beings.
Our happiness depends on our having a sense of purpose and meaning in life. We
need to feel in our heart that what we are doing is significant and important; that
it's right and good. A multitude of social science studies related to happiness
confirm our common sense. Once our basic material needs are met, the pursuit of
happiness is about developing the social and spiritual dimensions of our lives,
rather than striving to acquire more income or wealth.

Fortunately
farming in year 2050 simply means returning to real farming. As with the industrial era in general, farming as
just another agribusiness is an unsustainable aberration in human history. The word farm comes from Middle
English word, ferme ("variously meaning: tenant, rent, revenue,
stewardship, meal, feast"), from Old English feorm, farm
("meaning provision, food, supplies, possessions, rent, feast"), from
Proto-Germanic firmō, firχumō ("means of living,
subsistence"), and from Proto-Indo-European perkwu-
("life, strength, force").[5] It is related to other Old
English words such as feormehām, feormere ("purveyor,
grocer"), feormian ("to provision, sustain"), and feorh
("life, spirit"). The Old English word was borrowed by Medieval Latin
as firma, ferma ("source of revenue, feast"), and
strengthened by the word's resemblance to the Latin words, firma, firmus
("firm, solid") and firmitas ("security, firmness").

Farmers need only reclaim the richness of the historic meaning of farming
and reject the concept of farming as an industry or agribusiness. Certainly,
economic concepts such as “rent, revenue, tenant, and means of living” are
historical aspects of farming. But, farming also has been identified with provision
of physical and mental sustenance for society: “provision, grocer, subsistence,
life, benefit, spirit, and feast.” Equally important, farming has always
included a moral or ethical commitment to long run food security or permanence:
“stewardship, strength, firm, solid, security, and sustain.”Real farming has always been an ethical,
social, and economic way of life – a means to pursue happiness. Sustainable
farming isn't really a new idea. A real farm has always meant an economically,
socially, and ecologically sustainable farm.

Historically, farmers were held
in high esteem in the United States and around the world because of their
unique importance to human society. Thomas Jefferson believed strongly that the
“yeoman farmer” best exemplified the kind of “independence and virtue” that
should be supported by the new democratic republic of the United States. He
believed financiers, bankers, and industrialists could not be trusted and
should not be encouraged by government. In light of our current financial situation
in the U.S., “Jeffersonian Democracy” still makes a lot of sense.

Adam Smith, in writing the Wealth of Nations, noted that no
endeavor requires a greater variety of “knowledge and experience” than does
farming, other than possibly the fine arts or liberal professions. He observed
that farmers ranked among the highest social classes in China and India, and
suggested it would be the same everywhere if the “corporate spirit” did not
prevent it. Smith also suggested that “they who feed, clothe, and lodge the
whole body of people, should have a share of the produce of their own labor as
to themselves be tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.”[6]Smith's reference to China was to the ancient philosophy of Confucius
which ranks farmers second only to the academics or scholars in the Chinese
social order. Following the farmer is the worker, and lastly, the businessman.
Note that all of these respected historical figures placed those concerned
primarily with economic matters at the lowest levels of society and those
engaged in agriculture at or near the top.

The farms of 2050 will be smaller than most
of today's commercial farms because sustainable farms must rely less on fossil
energy and more on management and labor, meaning more smaller farms and more
opportunities for farmers. It will take knowledge, creativity, innovation, and
entrepreneurship to produce enough food to meet the needs of all sustainably.
Human scale technologies, such as the microcomputer, will make knowledge more
easily acquired and creativity and entrepreneurship more effectively used.Even today, organic and other sustainable
systems of food production can produce as much or even more than industrial
systems per acre of land or dollar of investment using far less fossil energy.
They just require more thoughtful, insightful, caring farmers.

Sustainable communities of 2050
will have preserved and restored the fertile farmlands that remained in the
areas where most of the cities and towns in America were initially settled. They
will be communities that understand that today's local food movement is not
just about restoring healthy diets and healthy bodies, although health is
obviously essential to physical well-being. Local foods provide both the
motivation and means of reconnecting
people in meaningful personal and social relationships. Local food systems also
will allow people to support their local farmers economically, and thus support
their local economies. Through local farmers, people will reconnect spiritually
with the land and regain a sense of purpose and meaning in life through a
commitment to stewardship of nature. Farmers will again be held in high esteem
as the icons of democracy and the caretakers of the future of humanity.

This is a vision of a new and better world that is worth taking the
risks and enduring the difficulties of revolutionary change. The change may not
be quick or easy but it most certainly is possible; and in this, there is hope.
The emergence of a new vision of agriculture was apparent, even if not
prominent, in the 2007 USDA Census of Agriculture, which indicated a 4%
increase in the number of farms in the U.S. between 2002 and 2007. After
falling for several decades, the trend in farm numbers between 1992 and 2002 had
been virtually flat. The largest increase in farm numbers was for farms with annual
sales less than $10,000. Admittedly, many of these were hobby farmers – rural
residents who sold a few of the things they enjoyed producing. However, farms
with less than $250,000 in sales made up well over 50% of all farmers who
considered farming to be their “primary occupation,” even though they accounted
for less than 20% of total sales of farm products.

Many of the new farms were not residential/lifestyle farms, retirement
farms, or limited-resource farms. They were real
farms; they provided a desirable quality of life and an acceptable level of
income for themselves or their families. The new farmers in the 2007 census were
different from conventional farmers – as were their customers. They were more
likely to be female than were existing farmers. They were also more racially
diverse, including African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans.
A significant number were immigrants, but the vast majority was native born.
The new farmers included people of all ages but on average were younger than
existing farmers. Many were young people who had no experience or previous
connection to farming. Most were well educated, but still willing to work hard
for little pay in on-farm internship programs to learn the art, science, and
practice of real farming. What they lacked in experience they more than made up
for in energy, enthusiasm, and commitment. In this new generation of new
farmers, in particular, there is hope for the future of farming.

This hope for a brighter future
of farming can be seen most clearly in the sustainable agriculture movement.
The movement includes farmers who call themselves organic, ecological,
biodynamic, holistic, practical, innovative, or just plain family farmers. What
they have in common is their commitment to creating a permanent agriculture
that can meet the needs of the present without diminishing opportunities for
the future. They know they must balance the need for economic viability with
ecological and social integrity to achieve sustainability. The numbers of new
farmers is growing each year, as is evident at the dozens of sustainable
agriculture conferences held annually all across the continent. At least six
“sustainable agriculture” conferences in the U.S. and Canada each draw more
than 1,200 participants each year, with a few reaching 2,500 to 3,000. The
larger conferences typically are organized by grass-roots organizations and the
vast majority of those attending are farmers and their customers. Sustainable
agriculture conferences drawing 500-700 are far from rare and conferences
drawing 100-250 people per year are too numerous to attempt to count, including
conferences in virtually every state in the U.S. The size and numbers of such
conferences is growing each year.

Perhaps
even more important, these new farmers are being supported by a growing number
of allies among other like-minded farm and non-farm groups. The issues of
global climate change, fossil energy depletion, economic globalization, growing
social inequity, corporate consolidation of the food system, confinement animal
feeding operations (CAFOs), genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and other
more general food safety, health, and nutrition issues are creating a new
sustainable/local food movement among consumers. The Slow Food movement, for example, is a worldwide
organization with about 100,000 members in over 150 countries. Slow Food's
approach to agriculture, food production and gastronomy is… defined by three
interconnected principles:, “Good: a fresh and flavorsome
seasonal diet that satisfies the senses and is part of our local culture; Clean: food production and
consumption that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health; Fair: accessible prices for consumers and fair conditions and pay
for small-scale producers.[7]Good, clean, and fair are
becoming the watchwords of the sustainable foods movement.

With wider recognition and growing consumer support, the sustainable agriculture movement is
reaching beyond the farm gate, beyond farmers markets and CSAs, and into
higher-volume food markets.Independent
food processors, distributors, and marketers are beginning to realize they face
the same kinds of challenges from a corporately controlled, global food system
as do independent family farmers.They
are also beginning to understand that they have the same kinds of opportunities
as farmers in helping to create and benefit from a new and different
sustainable food system.Food industry studies indicate approximately
one-third of American consumers are willing pay premium prices for healthful
and nutritious foods that have ecological, social, and economic integrity.[8]With these new allies, the sustainable agriculture movement now embraces
tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of like-minded advocates and
active supporters scattered across the continent.

Our current well-being and the future of humanity are no less dependent
on real farmers today than in the days of Jefferson, Smith, or even
Confucius. We are just less aware of our dependencies on the land and the
people who farm it. Most important, sustainable farmers, real farmers, can
demonstrate to the rest of American society that it is possible to meet the
challenges of today and to create a new and better way of life for the future.
The entire economy is just as dependent on the resources of the earth and the imagination,
creativity, and caring of the people who bring forth other economic value from
the earth as is agriculture. The connections are just easier to see in
agriculture. Restoring quality of life to real farming and sustainability to
agriculture can serve as powerful examples of the possibilities for restoring
happiness and quality to American life and sustainability to the American
economy.

The great transition to a
sustainable agriculture will not come easy, but we know it is possible; in
possibility, there is hope. Agriculture cannot and need not change alone, a
similar transformation is taking place through the economy and society; in this
there is hope. We know the changes we need in farming are possible because it
means a return to real farming; to
farming as way of life as well as a way to make a living. This doesn't mean we
must go back to “forty-acres and a mule” or pulling weeds and chopping cotton.
The issue is not technology but which technologies are developed and employed.
The great transition means returning to the core principles and values of
farming before it became an agribusiness or industry. It means abandoning
unsustainable economic growth and returning to the pursuit of happiness, in farming
and in life. It means going back to the future; in this there is hope.

The great
transformation will not be easy. Keynes warned that humanity has become so
accustomed to striving for the necessities of life that it would difficult to
stop striving when we finally had “enough.” The economically and politically
powerful will tell us we must continue to strive, that the only hope for
happiness is in wealth. Their wealth depends on our continued striving. However,
we know we are social and ethical beings as well as physical beings. We know in
our heart that when as we find happiness in relationships and stewardship we
will also find ways to get enough “stuff.” We don't have to wait for the rest
of the world to change. We have the final prerequisite for the change we need
to find happiness: we have reason for hope.

In the
words of Vaclav Havel – philosopher, reformer, and former president of the
Czech Republic: Hope is not the same as
joy when things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that
are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for
something to succeed.Hope is
definitely not the same thing as optimism. It's not the conviction that
something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense,
regardless of how it turns out.It is
this hope, above all, that gives us strength to live and to continually try new
things, even in conditions that [to other] seem hopeless.Life is
too precious to permit its devaluation by living pointlessly, emptily, without
meaning, without love and, finally, without hope.[9]

We are living in a time of fundamental change.
We have the opportunity to help create a new and better world through agriculture,
by looking back to find a better future, a future with more farmers and smaller
farms. We know that real farming
makes sense, regardless of how our efforts to reclaim it may turn out. Even if
we ultimately fail in this great undertaking, we should always remember, life
is simply too precious to live without hope.

End Notes

[i] Prepared for presentation at the
Langston University Twentieth Annual
Small Farms Conference, “Back to the Future: Successful Small Farms,”
Langston, OK, May 26, 2011.